Shared Space
by Bainaku
Summary: Roxanne Ritchi is cold.  Megamind warms her up.


**Commentary**: Written in hopes of making someone feel a smidge better. Best wishes, Mem, and warm thoughts!

A one-shot, post-film. My first attempt at this fandom. Oh goodness.

**Warning**: Innuendo!

**Disclaimer**: I don't own Megamind. This was for fun, for fun, for _fun._

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**SHARED SPACE**

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They are the pair of them light sleepers and loners too, and these things make for long nights at first.

Roxanne Ritchi is unaccustomed to having a man in her bed, but even more she is unaccustomed to having Megamind there: his sharp elbows, his knife knees, his cold monkey-furled toes. Because parts of him are villainous to the core, he thieves the sheets and takes hostage the comforter; his hips jar hers and his stern nosetip prods her neck, her ear, her temple. It often pokes her awake. His long, luxurious lashes make for ticklish nightwear.

For his part, Megamind is unused to being in a place like Roxanne Ritchi's bedroom, where the lights of the city he guards now speckle the darkness like stars, and where the fanblades make soft _whtt-whtt-whtt _noises above he and another, _another_. She sighs and her warmth, her rounds, her curves press into him. Instinctively he edges away, taking the bedclothes with him in a furtive clutch, because he has spent his entire life living within, behind, and between lines. Said lines—prison bars, social stigmas, the sneers and frowns of his fellows—have defined him, have given him purpose until now.

Roxanne mewls in sleep and, crossing those lines, follows him across her mattress. Her breasts bump his shoulderblades; her mouth, lax and a little wet, touches and traces his nape. She drives a fleshy knee into his scant left buttock. Her lips lift in a wordless mutter. The cool silk of her shortly-shorn locks brushes his eartip.

He shivers, and she does too.

Folding his hands in a steeple beneath his cheek, Megamind stares at the cityscape beyond her bedroom window until its lights blur into a golden smear in his lashes. He drifts into a small half-doze just as Roxanne, seeking sheets, slants her eyes open and scowls sleepily at his bony spine.

Several evenings pass this way: wherein their differences are enough to keep them wondering and awake.

On a Tuesday morning approximately a week and a half after they begin spending the night in the same room—they aren't doing enough sleeping for it to be called _sleeping together_—Megamind looks up over the rim of his coffee cup at Roxanne. She is eating a bagel: she has a spot of cream cheese on her nose, and the hair on one side of her head is still flat from its nightly romp with her pillow. She is reading the paper, attentive as always to mediums of reporting even if they aren't electronic and televised. Her fingers tap certain headlines, smooth captions, fondle the grayscale faces of those citizens caught in pictures.

The dark smudges beneath Roxanne's eyes make her look like a masked foraging omnivorous mammal.

He reaches across the dinette and rubs one of those smudges with a narrow cobalt thumb. He states, sweeping his other arm out for emphasis, "This is ridiculous."

Roxanne flicks her gaze from the paper to him. Her mouth full of bread and cheese, her cheeks puffed, she asks him, "Humh?" She keeps his gaze for approximately two seconds. Her eyes crawl slowly back toward the paper, to an advertisement marked _SHOE SALE SPECTACULAR—PRICES SLASHED_. A woman can never have enough shoes, especially when said woman and her faithful camera crew run regularly around the city in the wake of her supervillain-gone-superhero boyfriend.

Roxanne Ritchi has fallen arches. Proper support is _vital_.

"You're not sleeping enough," Megamind informs her, tone a touch peevish. He is disappointed he does not command her full attention. The press of his thumb is nevertheless anxiously gentle, a flutter alongside her nose. He goes on, "These marks, while quite fetching and cute, are indicators of that very fact."

Roxanne swallows, sighs. The thought of shoes slips by the wayside, distant and dreamlike now. "You aren't supposed to point out a woman's flaws, see, especially not this early—"

"I am the cause of the flaws. The rest of you is perfect," Megamind grouches. Shifting his hand, he wipes the cream cheese from the tip of her nose. He is astonished to find the flesh beneath it red.

In fact, Roxanne's whole face is working on a new and very sudden kind of crimson.

"Well," she huffs around a startled, smug smile, "make my day all over the place, why don'tcha?"

Oblivious, Megamind insists, "The day is not what concerns me. At _night_—"

"You steal the covers and you're _pointy_," Roxanne finishes. "You take some getting used to, Megamind, and you're not exactly looking well-rested yourself. You've got serious purple Magic Marker action going on here." She taps the flesh beneath her eye to indicate where she means. "I'll bet I'm a little weird for you too, huh?"

_Weird_, Megamind thinks, and imagines her against him in the dark, warmth and heat and softness where before there has always been only stillness, silence, cool sheets. He frowns. _Weird indeed._

She rises. She folds the paper—crookedly, of course; she can't abide lines anywhere, the ferocious Miss Ritchi—and tosses it back down onto the dinette's surface. The pages scutter.

"You underestimate my adaptive capabilities," Megamind scoffs, late but great even so. He maneuvers his elbows in a butterfly flourish, nearly knocking away both his coffee cup and a saucer of grapefruit. "I am an environmental chameleon, Miss Ritchi, adept at the art of adjusting to _any_ and _every_ situation—"

She picks up her glass of orange juice and downs its remainder in a gulp, like a shot. She gives him a knowing look through its pulp-stippled curve.

He straightens in his chair. He holds her countenance: his green eyes war with her blue ones. His brow quivers; his forehead wrinkles. He leers—he's good at it. She purses her lips. They fall still, both of them, gazes locked, breath held. The coffeemaker burbles contentedly in the background.

Somehow she wins their contest, and he drops his eyes first. He gives them a defeated blink.

Tapping his fingers around his cup, Megamind admits without looking up again, "Maybe I am a _little_ tired." He holds thumb and index a smidgen apart to show her how much.

Roxanne grins. When she leans in to kiss his cheek, her breath washes like citrus over him and he smiles, unable to help it. She cups his angular chin in her hand and lifts his head: turns it first one way, then another. Her own head swivels to follow these motions. "Hmm," she says. Her lips ghost over his flesh.

"Hmm?" he echoes.

"I'm still hungry," Roxanne opines. Her index finger rises between them, razes down the stiff exclamation point of his goatee. "Gimme some sugar, how about?"

Despite being slightly surprised by the request, Megamind gropes for the crystal bowl in the middle of the dinette. Roxanne, puckered up and expectant, leans back a little to see the delay. She giggles, an infectious, incredulous sound. Megamind is still startled to hear it coming from her, that musical chime, and he has trouble believing that he is often the reason behind it.

"Different kind of sugar," she corrects him, still huffing out giggles against his cheek. She catches his mouth. Her tongue whispers over his lower lip and he parts his smile for her, nibbles at hers too. He furls his hand about her ample hip above the edge of the dinette. She wiggles into his palm, his lifeline, and fits there.

They part reluctantly because Roxanne's cell phone begins to buzz. She pulls it from her purse, glances at it—rolls her eyes. "Duty calls," she mutters. "I'm pretty sure the new intern got his tie stuck in the copier again and—ugh." She makes a disgusted face, but behind her twisted lip is fondness. Megamind would know—she uses the same expression for him sometimes, over rubble and ruin and once when she caught him in her shower, his spidery hands and willow-bent body covered in her raspberry-pomegranate bath scrub.

"I'm off, then," she sighs. She halfheartedly mimes flying à la Metro Man. She looks at him through shuttered lashes. "See you tonight?"

He hesitates. His eyes flit to the smudges on her face, trench-like tracks of sloughed sleep and hours spent awake in the night. His fingers find a fork nearby his coffee cup. He picks it up, uses it to ruthlessly spear the grapefruit. The abused melon squirts free a jet of clear juice and he asks, "Is it really all right? For you to see me?"

Roxanne's lips widen into that laughing smile Megamind enjoys so much. Though the sassy brunette displays it for the entire city to see on her channel's daily broadcasts, he likes to think it—the smile, of course—is just for him.

"We'll work it out," comes the assurance, and she drops one more kiss onto his shining sky-colored dome. "So _yes_. It's okay." Her fingers fiddle down his jawline. "Sometimes flaws are worth having, you know," she tells him, and then she leaves him sitting there at the dinette, savaged grapefruit and cooling coffee at either wrist, his heart an odd hard lump in his chest. The door clicks behind her.

Some time later he rises, moving to sweep back a cape that is not there—not yet, anyway. "Minion!" he roars. "Minion, quick!"

A great metallic rustle sounds from Roxanne's guestroom. Minion's glass cranium winks through the hallway and the fish-creature therein flutters his fins in greeting, his sharp teeth crooked in a genial smile. "Sir!" he replies.

"The car, Minion—retrieve it." Megamind draws himself up to his full height. His devilhead slippers squeak on the kitchen tile. His brows align impressively. "We have a shopping mission."

"Right away, sir!" Minion agrees eagerly. "Where are we going?"

"We," Megamind purrs, words sibilant and sinister, "must venture to the fabric store." He says the first part of the place as _fabreek_.

"Very good, sir—excellent! …uh." Minion flounders, no pun intended. "_Why _are we going to the fabric store?"

"It is a key element in a diabolical plot I'm crafting that involves Miss Ritchi," Megamind informs his subordinate, plain. Minion's eyes widen behind the glass.

"Oh!" he realizes. "Of course!" He chews his lip, hopeful. "Sir," he hedges, "would it be possible to go to the fabric store on 11th Street?"

Megamind scowls, a delicate pinch of cheeks and teeth. "The one at Twixby Crossing is, if memory serves, approximately five-point-oh-seven miles closer," he protests. "Why should we go to the other?"

Minion's gills undulate in and out excitedly. "There's an international grocery in the same complex," he puts in, "and they sell the city's best red chilis. I was thinking of making enchiladas tonight."

Megamind's face smoothes. Shadows lace across it, darkening its shallow curves. Settling back in his chair at the dinette, he steeples his long fingers together into a churchtower above his coffee cup and wonders aloud, soft, testing and tasting the word:

"_Enchiladas_."

Behind him, Minion smiles.

Hours pass.

At six and sunset, Roxanne comes home to Minion in her kitchen and the best Mexican food she'll ever eat waiting on the stovetop, still hot. At half past, Megamind shows up too. He wolfs down his portion of the dinner gratefully, his fingers playing a xylophone up her thigh beneath the dinette. He finishes, thanks Minion—who blushes, if a fish-creature can blush—and makes for the door again.

Roxanne, who was hoping to spend an evening with the blue super-genius, pouts at him and inquires, "Where are you going?"

"Lair," he tells her, fastening his cloak against the night's chill. The doorknob glitters under his glove like a polished jewel.

"Diabolical plan," Minion stage-whispers nearby, his hands submerged in suds and dishes. Roxanne is drying them as he passes them over.

"Back later," Megamind reinforces. He blows her a kiss—he's too sweet to know how to wink when it comes to her, really. He opens the door, flickers out, closes it behind him, and she listens to the sound of his boots as he steps down the hall.

Ten o'clock. Eleven. Three-quarters past. Minion, yawning and sidling along the edge of his bowl, chuffs his robotic fingers fondly over her arm before he retires for the night. Eyelids drooping, Roxanne herself fights not to succumb to sleep. As the small numbers on the microwave's display in the kitchen whicker past midnight, though, the reporter cants sideways on the couch and drifts into slumber with her forearm as her pillow.

She drools down into the well of her wrist.

A hand in the darkness, then: tipping her upright. Her head lolls onto a sharp shoulder and she thinks, drowsy, disjointed, _Megamind_.

"Hey," he says to her, "hey, Miss Ritchi." His voice is low, dulcet, and she feels his fingers patter over her collar and down the seam of her blouse, dealing with the buttons there. They unsnap, uh-one-an'a-two-an'a-three, and his hand flares the blouse open, slides one sleeve free.

Roxanne wriggles, surprised. She opens an eye and blinks into the dark, and all she can see is the gaunt outline of her boyfriend's jaw and the bleary dent of what might be his smile. "Hey," she responds, and grates out, "what!" because he's got her top off now, oh yes, and he's not usually like this and he's never touched her before with such surety, such _conviction_—

He rolls her lightly in his arm, the muscles in it wiry and small and strong, and folds something over her in place of the missing blouse. It is soft and it clings a little, and his cheek touches her forehead as he carefully shimmies it first down her one arm, then the other. He draws it closed over her breasts and ties it thus, loose and lingering.

He stops. She breathes into his throat, eyes wide, until he asks, "Well?" He sounds almost like a child, anticipation and hope clamoring in his question.

She is forced to toss back, "Well _what_?"

He sighs. Her hair flutters under the exasperated exhale. He demands, "Are you _warm_ now? And cushioned?" He lightly nudges an elbow into the flesh above her kidney. She barely notices the impact.

She sits up under his arm and against his ribs, pressing her hands down over herself in her living room's frail light. He has dressed her in a thing that feels like fleece, but is thicker somehow: it ties at the front and her bra peeks out between its folds, white against her whiter flesh. The new top is yellow and covered in a pattern of sanguine chili peppers.

She is warm, yes—she is wondering. She looks at him, her mouth open. She asks without asking.

"Minion thought you would like the design," he explains. He is afraid she might think him insincere if he tacks on, _I thought so too because the chilis remind me of you, Miss Ritchi. They have this scintillating kick and sometimes they make my throat close up. _ So he says nothing about his perception of fashion and how it ties to her, not now.

His wedge chest expands under his cloak as he sucks in a breath. He's nervous—Roxanne can tell. He is not used to giving gifts like this—to giving gifts, period.

"I reinforced the fabric with a thin layer of insular, breathable foam of my own making," Megamind continues. "It—it should be sufficient in the night when, uhm. When I hoard the blankets. And it should protect you from my, you know."

She knows, but he jabs out with his elbows anyway: away from her. Their sharpness seems to puncture the room's shade and the lights of the city are bright on his face, his sweet face, his sweet narrow face so hungry for approval and acceptance and _her_.

Roxanne tries, "You made me a pajama top."

"Well," he disagrees, "_pajamas_." He reaches aside, fishes around. Plastic shivers. He lifts a set of pants bedecked with the same chili peppers as the top she's already wearing.

So Roxanne Ritchi says, "You made me pajamas."

His eartips are like the bruised flesh beneath his eyes, purple and pinched. He watches her down the line of his nose, uncertain whether to be proud or ashamed. His throat bobs in a swallow. He is quiet, quiet. His gaze holds hers.

She looks away first this time, though only to seek another part of him.

Roxanne finds it: his hand resting on his thigh. She takes it in her own. She worries it between her fingers, smoothes her thumb over his. She turns it over, his slim palm, and pulls it up between them, to her, to the folds of the top. She guides it a little closer and his fingertips brush her flesh just above her heart, and she says, "Thank you."

She looks at him: he at her. She finishes, "But help me take it off."

Later, in the glow of the city and her sheets, they have no trouble sleeping.


End file.
